Similarly, the document said trans adults, even if they had gender-transition surgery, could serve as godparents under certain conditions. That reversed an earlier outright ban.
“I have to congratulate them,” said Dr. Tatsuo Kawai of Mass General, who noted that his own pig kidney patient was healthier overall going into his operation than NYU’s patient. “When the heart function is bad, it’s really difficult to do a kidney transplant.”More than 100,000 people are on the U.S. transplant waiting list, most who need a kidney, and thousands die waiting. In hopes of filling the shortage of donated organs, several biotech companies are genetically modifying pigs so their organs are more humanlike, less likely to be destroyed by people’s immune system.
NYU and other research teams have temporarily transplanted pig kidneys and hearts. Then the University of Maryland transplanted pig hearts into two men who were out of other options, andMass General’s pig kidney transplant last month raised new hopes. Kawai said Richard “Rick” Slayman experienced an early rejection scare but bounced back enough to go home earlier this month and still is faring well five weeks post-transplant. A recent biopsy showed no further problems.
Pisano is the first woman to receive a pig organ — and unlike with prior xenotransplant experiments, both her heart and kidneys had failed. She went into cardiac arrest and had to be resuscitated before the experimental surgeries. She’d gotten too weak to even play with her grandchildren. “I was miserable,” the Cookstown, New Jersey, woman said.A failed heart made her ineligible for a traditional kidney transplant. But while on dialysis, she didn’t qualify for a heart pump, called a left ventricular assist device or LVAD, either.
“It’s like being in a maze and you can’t find a way out,” Montgomery explained — until the surgeons decided to pair a heart pump with a pig kidney.
With emergency permission from the Food and Drug Administration, Montgomery chose an organ from a pig genetically engineered by United Therapeutics Corp. so its cells don’t produce a particular sugar that’s foreign to the human body and triggers immediate organ rejection.The Associated Press examined draft and final budget proposals and spoke to more than a dozen current and former federal employees to determine the scope of the cuts to programs tracking basic facts about Americans’ health.
Among those terminated at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were experts tracking abortions, pregnancies, job-related injuries, lead poisonings, sexual violence and youth smoking, the AP found.“If you don’t have staff, the program is gone,” said Patrick Breysse, who used to oversee the CDC’s environmental health programs.
Federal officials have not given a public accounting of specific surveillance programs that are being eliminated.Instead, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman pointed the AP to a Trump administration budget proposal released Friday. It lacked specifics, but proposes to cut the CDC’s core budget by more than half and vows to focus CDC surveillance only on emerging and infectious diseases.